The Faerie Magazine Blog

Looking for Faeries - The Victorian Tradition

2010-10-18T11:06:00.000-07:00

The Bendigo Art Gallery in Australia is kicking off a new exhibit.

They write, "In Victorian England, the possibility of a parallel realm alive with fairies, elves and other ethereal creatures preoccupied the minds of the general public. Today's fairies are often portrayed as twee childhood daydreams, but during the later part of the 19th century faerieland was a very adult preoccupation and, at times, verged on the sinister. Far from benign, nature sprites were often used as explanation for the unexplained, wreaked havoc on households and conducted themselves according to their own particular non-human logic. Looking for faeries brings together more than 160 extraordinary works that reflect upon the imagination and extraordinary legacy of the Victorian fairy tradition."

I thought that was a very nicely stated short description of Victorian fairy traditions.

Mail Call

2010-02-16T16:20:00.001-08:00

I received a beautiful piece of correspondence in the mail today. The envelope is soft cotton with the most perfect soft wrinkles and folds. It has a waxed seal with the initial "F" and hand glued rhinestones that create two lovely flowers. How refreshing to receive something so beautiful! It made me take pause - what is it that makes beautiful mail so special? First and foremost, I appreciate the thoughts and efforts made especially for Faerie Magazine. And I know it was initally and thoroughly created specifically for Faerie Magazine because it had our name on the other side! The contents were already sealed when the envelope was decorated! I want to send beautiful letters in beautiful envelopes too! I began to think - how could we begin a 'beautiful things' pen pal club? How many people would be interested? How old fashioned, and fun!

Studio Ghibli Borrows The Borrowers

2010-02-01T08:54:00.000-08:00

I’ve recently been re-reading the classic children’s book The Borrowers, by Mary Norton. It’s about a family of tiny people who live in a hole beneath a large clock in a bedridden old woman’s house. They make their living by taking things from human beings, an activity that they call “borrowing”. Our matchboxes serve as dressers for them, a tureen is a bathtub, and coins are their plates. Of course, they also steal bits of food, but even tiny bread crumbs are quite substantial for them. The author suggests that Borrowers are a more contemporary version of the magical race traditionally referred to as “little people”. However, when the daughter of the tiny family, who is named Arrietty, is asked if she is a fairy, she flatly denies it and even claims that she doesn’t believe in them!
Arrietty forms a secret friendship with a human boy who was sent to the house to recuperate from rheumatic fever. Being “seen” by people often leads to Borrowers being chased out of their homes by cats and unsympathetic adults, so Arrietty’s parents are naturally very upset by this turn of events. Unfortunately, the humans in this novel do not prove themselves to be an exception to this rule. Several sequels to The Borrowers involve the tiny family having to relocate to less hospitable habitats, including a tea kettle located precariously near a river!
By coincidence, I found out that an upcoming Studio Ghibli movie happens to be based on The Borrowers. For those of you not familiar with Ghibli, it is a wonderful animation studio headed by Hiyao Miyazaki. It is the Japanese equivalent of Disney and is responsible for such brilliant children’s films as My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service. The new movie will be called Karigurashi no Arrietty and is scheduled for summer, 2010. I’ve included an image of a promotional poster for the upcoming film. If you go to see it, don’t forget to share your popcorn with the Borrowers that are surely under the seats of your local movie theater!
--Joelle Mellon

Christmas Spirit

2009-12-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

This past Sunday, I was driving home through a nearby neighborhood with very large, well groomed houses built in the 1920's, many of them newly decorated for the Christmas holiday. Christmas music was playing on my radio but I was resistant to the spirit of Christmas, saddened because my brother is no longer with us. When I rounded a particular corner in said neighborhood, there was a very large tree, four stories tall that a local tree service decorates with lights and the neighbors were gathering for the 'lighting of the tree'. It was charming. When I arrived home, I had an email from Sue Miller, artist of the image attached to this post. You see, Sue also lost her brother this year. I was encouraged that although Sue is feeling the same feelings, she painted a Santa! And I love this Santa! And I love Christmas! Thank you Sue, for helping to bring back the Christmas spirit!

See more of Sue's art at www.suemillerart.com

A FaerieCon Review

2009-11-17T16:59:00.000-08:00

FaerieCon is a gathering of many people who love myth, folklore, fairy tale, costuming, music, artisans & craftsmen/women, world renowned authors and artists, and very importantly - those who enjoy being around like minded folk.
The Marriot's Hunt Valley Inn was host to the event and their staff was impressive. The set up process was very organized. Special thanks to Kal from the MD Faerie Festival, you and the team were extremely helpful AND enthusiastic!
Daytime from Friday at 1pm until Sunday at 5pm, the hallways and rooms were filled with streams of happy people, some bustling about to and from informative panels and some leisurely looking about at the creative displays filled with magical faerie finery. Many new friends were made on those days. Ideas were shared, opportunities discussed and those who sought inspiration were most certainly inspired.
Many thanks to the producers of FaerieCon, Kelly and Emilio Miller Lopez and Robert Gould, to Kimmy and the many familiar faces in the faerie community who help bring us all together.
Kim

Matt 'Lycan' Hunt, Faerie Magazine graphic designer/photographer and Mark Lewis, MC extraordinaire!

Faerie Folk in Role Playing Games (RPGS)

2009-10-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

I’ve gotten back into participating in tabletop role playing games recently. Although the most universally recognized of them is Dungeons and Dragons, many other variations of RPGs exist. The Fair Folk abound in such games, notably in one called Changeling. The most recent version of it was published by White Wolf in 2007. It features six types of fae that players can choose to assume the identity of, including the Darklings, Fairises, and the Wizened. (The races are known as “seemings” in game terminology.)
In Dungeons and Dragons, the most canonical game, players can choose their personal avatars from several races that live in the Feywild. There are elves, which excel at archery and all activities involving stealth. The eladrin, which are cousins of the elves, specialize in magic and longsword fighting. Gnomes tend to favor stealthily moving against enemies and striking from great distances with magic. There are other faerie races in Dungeons and Dragons that cannot be used as identities for the players. Instead, they are usually considered foes of the main characters in an adventure. These include sprites, which are primarily dangerous when they swarm and umbral sprites, which hunt any creatures that cross into their domains. Gnomes that have been altered by dark magic are called spriggans. They are sometimes referred to as redcaps due to their penchant for dipping their hats and clothing in blood.
There are lots of opportunities for a faerie enthusiast to take on the identity of his or her dreams in role playing games. Many readers of this blog are probably already doing so in gaming groups all over the world. If so, please tell us a bit about any experiences you have had playing a member of the Fair Folk in a role playing game!

--Joelle

A Fairy Ring in Greensboro, North Carolina!

2009-09-25T13:26:00.000-07:00

We have just received word of a fairy ring that has appeared in the front yard of Dale, Gloria, April and Brianna in Greensboro, NC.

There is much folklore about fairy rings. It has been the subject of many painters, writers and stories told throughout the years. For some, tradition would have it that this family must run around the ring 9 times to see if they hear the musings of fairies below. Others thought this was the portal to a fairy godmother, yet some may tell that here is a place of fertility and fortune. Is this a gateway to magical places?

Regardless, this family will take these photos to one of thier favorite places - The Carolina Renaissance Festival.

Thanks for sharing these photos with Faerie Magazine!

Especially for Gardeners: Faeries’ Favorite Herbs and Flowers

2009-08-29T19:29:00.000-07:00

According to traditional European folk wisdom, certain herbs have strong associations with faeries. The one that is best known of all is thyme -- in Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titania even sleeps on a bed of it. Planting thyme in your garden is supposed to protect your home from faerie mischief, while wearing an essential oil distilled from this herb should allow you to see faeries. It is important to note that any thyme used to make such an oil must grow “where faeries used to be”. St. John’s Wort, now a popular herbal remedy for depression, was used in Shakespeare’s day to break spells cast by the “little folk”. It was considered especially useful for counteracting their “sickness darts”, which they threw at humans to cause illness. Rosemary bushes are said to be a favorite place for faeries to hide because of their dense foliage.

Foxglove may be the flower that faeries like best -- they supposedly enjoy sleeping in their bell-shaped blossoms. Perhaps like foxes, slightly larger fae can also wear them as gloves. Other flowers that attract magical beings to gardens are primroses and marigolds. Any night-blooming flowers that are white in color will draw faeries who prefer to fly about after dark. If you plant any herbs or flowers to attract faeries, it is advisable to leave wine and sweets out in the garden for your winged guests, so that they will bless your land.

Kiva’s 20th Anniversary Reunion Concert

2009-08-19T22:06:00.000-07:00

For the Winter, 2005 issue of Faerie Magazine, I did an article on an amazing, magical band called Kiva. On Saturday, August 8, I was fortunate enough to attend their 20th anniversary reunion concert at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring, MD. In addition to the seven current core members (Ariana, Diana S., David, Diana M., Jim, Tim and Tigre), ten former and satellite Kiva musicians arrived to sing and play. It made for a very crowded stage but an all-encompassing sound! An Eastern dance troupe called Sister Luna was included in the festivities, adding a wonderful visual component to the show. The audience members themselves were also fascinating to behold, clothed in all manner of interesting dress. There were men in kilts, ladies in in shimmering gowns and even a young woman in elf ears! All in all, the performance lasted from 8 p.m. to well after midnight, and many audience members danced enthusiastically the entire time. At the show, Kiva offered a limited edition pre-release of their upcoming cd, So Far. It’s not leaving the cd changer in my car any time soon!

--Joelle

Time Leak in the Land of Faerie!

2009-07-30T06:18:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading The New Policeman by Irish author Kate Thompson. Though fictional, this book puts forth a very interesting theory about where all of our time (collectively) is going. There is a time leak in Tir na n’Og, the Irish faerie realm. Humans are upset about the leak because they have less and less time to do anything. The faeries are even more distressed, however, because time had always stood still in their land, but it suddenly seems to be moving forward. This means that, unless the time leak is stopped, they will begin to grow old and die. I love fiction that poses the idea that there may actually be something wrong with time itself! I feel like I’m always running around, waving my arms in the air in a frantic effort to get anything done. The last time I remember reading a book with a similar theme was decades ago, when Momo came out in English. It is by German author Michael Ende, whose most famous work is The Neverending Story. In the world of Momo, time is actually being stolen by sinister gray men called the Timesavers. It’s so wonderful -- I have the urge to get if off the shelf right now and start reading it again! Does anyone know of other fantasy books that deal with the issue of where all the time goes?

--Joelle

Medieval Beliefs about Faeries

2009-07-25T21:52:00.000-07:00

I recently re-read the section on faeries in The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual and Magic in Pre-Modern Europe. It is an impressively comprehensive book by Stephen Wilson about the idea that every European before the 18th century believed that magic surrounded and encompassed her daily life. According to Wilson, people once thought that faeries were pre-Christian beings, similar to the nymphs and fauns of ancient Greece. During the medieval and Renaissance eras, there were supposedly two types of faeries -- those associated with the home/farm and those who lived in wild places like the forest. Although wild faeries were generally regarded as dangerous, house and farm faeries were considered benevolent, as long as humans kept their homes tidy and left food and drink out for their faerie “guests”.
People who lived in the Pyrenees mountains had a specific custom about feeding the faeries on New Year’s Eve. Those who set out a good meal for faerie visitors on that night could expect their flocks of sheep and their harvests to flourish in the coming year. Those who neglected the faeries, however, would find that the new year brought them nothing but misery -- including fires, wild animal attacks on their sheep, blights on their crops and unhappy marriages. With such dire consequences hanging over their heads, of course, most everyone remembered the faeries’ meal! At dawn on New Year’s Day, the master of the house would take any bread that the faeries had left over from their supper, dip it in water or wine, and give everyone a piece to eat, including the servants.

--Joelle

The Cottingley Faerie Photographs

2009-07-19T19:21:00.000-07:00

This is an important month for faerie enthusiasts, since the first of the Cottingley photographs was taken in July, 1917. From that time until August, 1920, two young girls named Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths took a series of remarkable photographs of themselves in the company of faeries. In 1920, the noted Theosophist Edward Gardner saw the pictures and believed that they were real. He passed them on to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The famous writer published the photographs in the November, 1920 issue of Strand Magazine, declaring them genuine. In 1981, the girls (who had then become old ladies) admitted in an interview for The Unexplained magazine that most of the images had been faked. However, Frances maintained until her death that there had actually been faeries in the garden and that the fifth picture, which contained only faeries, was real. Frances’ daughter and granddaughter showed off the original photographs in a January, 2009 episode of the television series Antiques Roadshow. Both of them also professed their belief that the fifth photograph was genuine.

--Joelle

Dobby the House Elf

2009-07-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

The movie version of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is now out, so it seems like a good time to share some thoughts about Dobby. J.K. Rowling did not write about any faeries living in the wizarding world, but there are plenty of elves -- house elves to be exact. These magical creatures are the obedient, unpaid servants of wizards and are bound to a house, rather than to any person or family. If a wizard buys or inherits a home with an elf, he gets him or her along with the property. House elves possess their own form of extremely powerful magic, but they generally only use it when commanded to do so by their masters. The Harry Potter books include many house elves, and several are introduced by name. One of them, called Dobby, is decidedly the most involved in Harry’s life and struggles against dark wizards.

Dobby is introduced early in the series -- he first appears at the beginning of the second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Although he initially tries to sabotage Harry’s efforts to return to Hogwarts (out of misguided concern, not malice), the elf later becomes an invaluable ally. In the books, Dobby helps the young wizard by showing him the secret Room of Requirement, which Harry uses to train with his friends for the fight against Voldemort. The elf later spies on dark wizard Draco Malfoy and heroically rescues seven people when they are imprisoned at Malfoy Manner.

Dobby is an interesting character in the Harry Potter universe, and he has many fans ... there’s a good bit of fan fiction on the internet featuring him! There’s something appealing about the combination of incredible magic power combined with such obsequiousness. Of course, he’s also extremely loyal to Harry, to the point of valuing the young wizard’s life above his own. Wouldn’t you like to purchase a home that comes complete with its own house elf? Perhaps adding them to properties for sale would help with the world’s current economic woes ...

--Joelle

Charlotte's Bento Box Lunch!

2009-07-07T22:17:00.000-07:00

Hello readers!
I was trying to think of something fun and/or interesting to write about by way of introducing myself to you, but in the end I decided Kim was right (as I usually do), and settled on food. Lunch, to be exact. Charlotte’s lunch.

In my quest to keep lunches interesting and edible for my dear daughter, I stumbled across the art of Bento. Typically this is a Japanese art, as many are probably familiar from trips to the Sushi bar. It is delightfully easy to adapt to any cuisine however, as I (and others before me) have done for the preschool set. How do you make a Bento box for a child's lunch? Keep in mind, a Bento is really just a lunch box, only way cuter. The idea is to make it as appealing to the eyes as it will be to the smell and to the taste. Variety is key; variety in food groups, in colors and textures, and even in shapes and sizes. The picture here is Charlotte’s lunch for tomorrow: half a mini-bagel, a piece of cheese, a boiled egg (rendered as Mr. H. Dumpty, tragic hero of the nursery rhyme), and fruit that was meant to spell out "love", but rather looks like "lovi". The fruit is stuck on with a bit of honey. I was tempted to use peanut butter, but Charlotte has no love for peanut butter, and that is, of course, the most important part of any school lunch -- The child should want to eat it.
Yama

Rackham and Poe, oh my!

2009-07-05T17:15:00.001-07:00

Bloomsbury Auctions London are hosting an event on 9 July with several signed-limited Rackham offerings, including a Poe with an original watercolour...

Here is a link to a list of what is being auctioned at Bloomsbury. What a spread!

Listed items of interest.

BloomsburyAuctions

June 24: Fairy Day

2009-06-24T18:11:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the most exciting day of the year for Faerie enthusiasts -- Fairy Day! Founded by artist Jessica Galbreth, it is a great time for sending faerie cards to your friends and family (both electronic and paper), making faerie treats and crafts, or just dancing in faerie rings. Here is a link to the holiday’s official web site: www.fairyday.com It has lots of fantastic suggestions about how to celebrate and includes free e-cards, buttons and banners for your web page, faerie gardening tips, recipes, a faerie meditation and much more! Let’s each do our bit to make Fairy Day at least as popular as Talk Like a Pirate Day! (Where’s Dave Barry when you need him?) Feel free to comment about what you are planning to do or have done to celebrate!

--Joelle Mellon

The Faerie Almanac

2009-06-21T16:33:00.000-07:00

Sunday, June 21: Midsummer Night’s Dream

The Celts considered this day to be midsummer, so it would surely be a good day to celebrate Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream! It could be fun to invite several friends over, assign parts, and have everyone read it out loud. However, if your friends are shy or just not the thespian type, there are several versions of the play on DVD. Arguably, the most famous version of it came out in 1935, with James Cagney (who is generally remembered for playing gangsters) as Bottom and a very young Mickey Rooney as Puck. If you’re not into old movies, you can go for the more recent (1999) version with Kevin Kline as Bottom, Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania, and Rupert Everett as Oberon. Feel free to post any reviews of these movies (or other versions!) in the comments section. If you’re feeling intellectual, you can use this link www.theatrehistory.com/british/fairies_of_midsummer.html to read a truly fascinating essay from the early 1800’s about the faeries in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Happy midsummer, and never forget Puck’s famous words -- “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

--Joelle Mellon

Our First Entry - Introductions

2009-06-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

Good Day to you!

Starting a blog is something we've considered for a long time. There is much to share, too much to always fit into the magazine. Posts might not always be faerie related but hopefully of some contribution to the wonder of daily living.
Current contributors to this blog will be from the Faerie Magazine staff members: Yama George, Joelle Mellon and Kim Cross.
So here goes, the start of our blog. Thanks for stopping by!